Kind of hard to say anything else when the poem already says it all :) I'm kind of jealous of folks who still live on the same land as their grandparents and sometimes great-grandparents. I wonder what my immediate ancestors thought of snow, I wonder how they managed.

Me, I don't like winter and struggle to find positive things about it so I don't beat my head against a wall every December ;-) There is beauty in it, a sense of resting and gathering energy for the big burst of growth in spring, a transformative feel as rain becomes snow. I have to work at seeing that.

It is an odd thing about humans, Owly, how easily we are scattered hither and yon, far from where we were born. Someday I'll be able to articulate my thoughts about how it is, in its own peculiar way, a curse to be where everyone knows you, knows your past, the bad along with the good, and generations worth of it. Here, I'm guilty, in ways, of my grandparents' sins. And my roots run deep. Sometimes I fear I will never, ever be able to leave. I understand Scarlett and Tara in a way that many don't. It's a double edged sword.

Winter has a beauty, unique to its time and place. If autumn makes us feel sad, winter makes us feel numb, makes us turn inward to examine things we leave be the rest of the year.

It's funny, I'm back in the town I grew up in after 13 years away. Yet I just don't feel settled here, like I belong, even though my grandparents moved here & passed away here, and my parents were born here. The disadvantages of living here seem huge.

And I just don't like being cold, simple as that. I think about people millions of years ago, picking up and wandering many, many miles away with no (or little) idea of what they'd find. Without any conveniences at all. Walking the whole way. Maybe having to adjust to different climate and different surroundings. Maybe getting scared off by others along the way.

I think, wow, I couldn't do that. Life back then was real hardship. Stones for tools! I think, wow, I'm kind of spoiled! Maybe I shouldn't complain!